Peach Pie

 

8/5/26 Third Place Commons, Lake Forest Park

When I realized that I had a conflict on the day of the Ballard P-Patch’s annual Art in the Garden festival, I was so disappointed. Of course, I love sketching the flowers, live musicians and people enjoying this community summer event, but we all know the real reason I go: for the bake sale table! Specifically, the peach pie, and most especially when it has been baked by Mary Jean!

When I told her of my disappointment, MJ offered to bake one just for me at a later date, and I could still donate to the P-patch. When Roy heard of the special offer I had received, he decided he wanted a peach pie, too.

On Wednesday afternoon when it was too smoky to sketch outdoors, we met at Third Place Commons to devour peach pie together. With the carton of vanilla ice cream that Roy had picked up from Always Summer (where we’ve sketched before), we had ala mode.

Good friends, freshly baked (that morning!) peach pie ala mode, followed by sketching: Even on a smoke-filled day, it gets no better.

One Week 100 People, Year 10, Part 1

 

3/9/26 Metro Market parking lot, Crown Hill neighborhood

Although I participate in a few annual drawing challenges regularly and others more sporadically, my all-time favorite is One Week 100 People. Reading Marc Taro Holmes’ blog reminded me that this was the 10^th year of the challenge, which means I’ve participated for 10 consecutive years!

If you scroll through all the years, you’ll see that my style hasn’t changed much, nor has my goal: To capture people from life as simply as possible but also as unique individuals, not generic symbols. At least one year, I went to a studio life-drawing session for some part of the hundred. During the pandemic, I made self-portraits from a mirror – the only year I didn’t hit a hundred! All the other sketches were done in public spaces capturing whoever I saw. It’s all been so much fun while being great practice.

Sketching from my car in a grocery store parking lot has become a reliable though challenging standby: A regular stream of people going in and out. My favorite part is when they load groceries into their cars. With only seconds per sketch, it’s often frustrating, but I enjoy that tension. By comparison, Metro Market’s café was slow.

Metro Market cafe

That was Day 1. The next day, Roy, Mary Jean and I met at Third Place Commons to work on our hundred together. We all noted that the place was full of ideal “victims”: Some groups held meetings; others played cards. A crafting group was working on needlework and knitting; another group was painting and drawing. I caught a trio of bluegrass musicians jamming together. The best part: Almost everyone hardly moved!

3/10/26 Third Place Commons, Lake Forest Park

(Stay tuned for the rest of the week in Part 2.)

Oil Pastels: In or Out?

 

2/4/26 Haiya Paul Rubens oil pastels in Canson XL mixed-media sketchbook (photo reference)

Last year when I did my big downsizing of art supplies, it was easy to keep the things I use regularly or know that I enjoy using, even if I use them infrequently. It was also easy to get rid of things I knew I would never use. The difficult job was the whole middle ground: Things I wasn’t sure if I liked enough to keep, but maybe wanted to try again sometime.

This year my job is to go through that relatively small pile of uncertainty and decide, one way or the other. In that pile were a couple of sets of oil pastels I had purchased during the pandemic (during late-night retail therapy sessions to treat my probably common malady of boredom mixed with anxiety). Ironically, I tried them a bit during my own bout with COVID when I had plenty of sequestered time to experiment, but not much afterwards.

Do I like Caran d’Ache Neopastels and Haiya Paul Rubens oil pastels? Right off the bat, they have two strong disadvantages to my sketching lifestyle: They require a fairly large sketchbook, and they are messy, both on the hands and in forever transferring to other surfaces. That means I will never take them out to sketch on location. Anything that I can use only at home rarely gets used.

I decided to make a sketch with each product to remind myself of the experience. As I discovered the first time, I love the effects I can get with very soft and schmushy Haiya oil pastels (top of post). Using a smudging tool, the creamy, lipstick-like sticks can be blended as much as desired. I applied them fairly lightly, but I’ve seen demos online in which the product is applied and blended so heavily that the results can look like oil painting.

The Neopastels are much drier and not as easy to blend (sketch below). I immediately decided that I would not keep the set, although it was several times more expensive per stick than the Haiya set. But I was still unsure about the latter.

2/4/26 Caran d'Ache Neopastels in Canson XL mixed-media sketchbook (photo reference)

Since Mary Jean and Roy had both played with oil pastels, we decided to devote an art play date to sharing and exploring our various oil pastel products. To give the Haiya set one more try, I made the sketch below (it looks a bit abstract, but it’s an x-ray of my right shoulder, which was just diagnosed with adhesive capsulitis, or “frozen shoulder”).

2/13/26 Haiya Paul Rubens oil pastels in Canson XL mixed-media sketchbook (X-ray reference)

By the end of that sketch, I was almost ready to give up that whole set, too – but not quite. I compromised by keeping 10 colors from the set of 48, then let MJ have the rest. Roy got the Neopastels. My arty friends will make better use of them than I ever will.

While they continued making a mess, I retreated, with much relief, to the clean and tidy Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons (below) in my newly MacGyver’ed kit.

2/13/26 Third Place Commons (Neocolor II crayons in Hahnemuhle sketchbook)

Kids on the playground!

More Wacky Colors

 

12/31/25 Third Place Commons

Here are a couple more experiments using my wacky color palette. I’m diggin’ it!

I made the one above at Third Place Commons, where a few friends helped Natalie celebrate her birthday. The people I sketched were not part of our group; they happened to be sitting on the other end of the community table, and they were all sketching, too! In the background is the Honey Bear Bakery's mascot.

The one below is of Top Pot Doughnuts in Wedgwood. Most of the café space is filled with shelves containing old books, which form an interesting background pattern.

1/2/26 Top Pot Doughnuts, Wedgwood neighborhood

These values-based colors are fun to use in interior spaces. I haven’t tried using them outdoors, though – that will be next-level testing. Given all the rain and cold still ahead, though, it could be a while before I can get to that. In the meantime, I have more excuses to hang out in cafés.

Jason’s House

 

8/14/25 Los Angeles (photo reference)

When I visited my nephew Jason at his newish home in L.A. last April, I took photos with the intention of drawing the house as a gift. A beautiful Hacienda style house with classic white stucco walls and red clay roof tiles, it’s quintessential in southern California, yet rarely seen in these parts. I was looking forward to drawing it.

Strangely, I procrastinated for months. If I had spotted his house while out sketching on location, I would not have hesitated. Yet something about using a reference photo and with the intention of making a gift intimidated me. When I’m urban sketching, I give myself constant permission to be wonky because I’m just trying to capture the moment for myself. When I’m using a photo in the comfort of my studio, I feel like the result has to be more polished because I can tweak it all I want and have no excuse for wonkiness. How silly!

I was tired of having the project hanging over my head. After I finished the last of the commissioned dog portraits, I decided it was time to take on Jason’s house. And the way I psyched myself out was by pretending I was just out urban sketching.

Barely visible, here's the graphite block-in.

Of course, almost nothing I did was similar to my typical urban sketching process: First, I began by blocking in key architectural points with a graphite pencil. On location, I would have gone straight in with the Caran d’Ache Neocolor II crayons, and if I made a mistake, I would have simply found a way to cover it up. I also used larger paper (10-by-7 inches) than my usual sketchbooks. At least one of the Neocolor techniques I used (description coming up) is something I doubt I’d use on location. Finally, with a comfy chair in a clean, organized studio, I happily spent more than a couple of hours on this sketch – something I would never do onsite.

Once I put myself in the urban sketching mind frame, I got over the barrier and enjoyed the process immensely. In fact, I am very pleased with the result – more so than I usually am with architectural subjects. (For example, I didn’t especially like the result of the house portrait I made for my niece and her husband seven years ago; it’s interesting to see how different my approach was then.) It feels good to give this as a gift.

Secondary triad palette in Neocolor II water-soluble crayons

Material and technique notes: The moment I looked at my reference photo, I realized it was shouting for a secondary triad! I dug through my Neocolor II crayons to look for a triad that wasn’t too garish or vibrant (not my nephew’s vibe) but also wouldn’t be too literal. I like the four colors I chose (I added a second green) so much that I immediately put them into my Neocolor case for field use (and used the same colors the next day at Third Place Commons).

In particular, I like Aubergine (099) as the violet. It’s the warmest and least saturated violet in the Neocolor palette, and unfortunately, not available in the Cd’A Museum Aquarelle pencil line, or I would have discovered it sooner. It is, however, available in the Cd’A Supracolor line. To avoid getting lost in picky details, I resisted using the Aubergine pencil too much. Some architectural details, however, seemed important to include, like the sconce next to the entryway and the subtle gridwork of tiny “windows” in the wall seen between the palms. Those were too small to capture easily with blunt crayons, so it was nice having a pencil in the same hue.

Detail of shadows made with watercolor painting method

I used a technique that I rarely, if ever, use on location: I applied dry Aubergine and Moss Green (225) onto the plastic “palette aquarelle” that came with my Cd’A Mixed Media Botanical Set. I used a waterbrush to blend the colors to the shade of purplish-brown I wanted. Then I applied it just like watercolors.

That technique is not too different from the “licked” technique I use frequently with watercolor pencils, but since I’m taking the color from the plastic palette instead of directly from the crayon, I have the opportunity to blend the colors.

I could have used real watercolors for this step, but a big benefit of using the same water-soluble crayons is that the color scheme remains fully cohesive compared to using many different media. I know using mixed media is cool, but I prefer keeping things simple.

Finally, a word on the paper I used: Derwent Inktense Paper. A counterpart to the Derwent Lightfast Paper that I’ve lately been using with colored pencil pet portraits, Inktense paper is intended for use with wet media, especially Inktense pencils. Like the Lightfast paper, I bought the pad of Inktense paper years ago but never got around to using it – it was still shrink-wrapped.

Its warm tone seemed just right for southern California stucco, and its strong tooth gives an organic texture to the foliage with soft Neocolors. It’s 100 percent cotton like the Hahnemühle sketchbooks that I’m used to, so I felt comfortable with its sizing right away. It’s too bad this paper is so expensive – I’d be tempted to stitch a few sheets into small signatures for more portable use. I’ll probably save it for gifts and commissions.

Unseasonably Wet at Third Place Commons

 

8/15/25 Third Place Commons parking lot through upper-floor window

Unusual for this time of year, an atmospheric river was headed our way. With heavy rain and wind in the forecast for Friday when USk Seattle was scheduled to meet at a garden, we made a quick change to Third Place Commons, which is typically a wintertime mainstay for us. We were grateful to have this rare gem in Lake Forest Park, where a huge space of public seating is available for small meetings and other gatherings.

Grateful, yes, but I’ve also sketched there many times, so I walked around for quite a while trying to find a new angle. I spotted a small table tucked away next to large windows overlooking the parking lot (above). I recalled sketching from that same table many years ago, so I thought it would be fun to do it again. It was pretty comfy sketching with a hot cup of coffee through rain spattered glass as the atmospheric river got under way. (Here’s the blog post with that sketch from 2012 – my first time visiting Third Place Commons.)

After that, I wandered around again until I ran into Natalie. Sharing a table with her, I sketched a few people and lamps, happy to have my Urban Sketchers pals to hang out with on that unseasonably wet morning.

As is often the case, I can't spell and sketch at the same time. ;-)

360 at Third Place Commons

 

3/29/25 Third Place Commons, Lake Forest Park

Five other sketchers and I tried something fun during Saturday’s USk Seattle outing. Sitting together around a table, we each sketched the slice of view directly in front of us, forming a 360-degree view of Third Place Commons. When I’ve participated in 360 sketches previously (once at the downtown public library and another time at the UW Quad), the participants sat in a circle facing out. For this one, we all faced each other toward the center of the table, which meant we all included fellow sketchers. Fun!

After I finished my first sketch that included Kim (at right), I turned around in my seat 180 degrees to sketch whatever had been directly behind. I like that sketch better (below) because I could see further out into the distance.

During the last half hour before the throwdown, I walked around a bit and sketched a few more people enjoying the Commons on a Saturday morning.

Our 360 throwdown was incomplete because a couple of participants had already left by the time we remembered to photograph all of them together!

Play Date at Third Place Commons

 

2/17/25 Third Place Commons in Lake Forest Park (Caran d'Ache Luminance and Museum Aquarelle pencils in Stillman & Birn Zeta sketchbook)

The day after the Suzzallo Library USk outing, I had another opportunity to practice warm/cool color studies on location at an art play date with Roy and Mary Jean. I also got an idea to use watercolor pencils and non-soluble colored pencils together in a strategic way. I had tried it years ago but then forgot about it until my current colored pencil class reawakened old ideas.

Same pencils in one of our round-robin Seawhite of Brighton concertina books

The strategy is to use non-soluble pencils first for the drawing and the main coloring. Then in areas where I want more saturated coverage, I used watercolor pencils with washes, often in the opposite color as the initial layer. The non-soluble pencil marks show through, retaining the “pencil look” that I often miss after I’ve activated watercolor pencils too smoothly.

So exciting to be using and thinking about colored pencils again!

Downsizing, Phase 2: The Last Mile

 

1/22/25 Caffe Ladro, Roosevelt neighborhood

“Seeing the light at the end of the tunnel” should be the appropriate cliché for the current stage of my downsizing project: I really am near the end of Phase 2 (moving into my new studio/office). But in the back of my mind is some other kind of adage, or maybe it’s a parable, math story problem, logic trick or some other such nonsense that I’ve heard but can’t quite remember or articulate. It’s something about how you divide the distance between here and there in half. When you get to the middle, you divide the remaining distance again by half. Repeat and continue, and you get closer and closer to your destination but never arrive. Or perhaps the cliché I’m really looking for is “the last mile is the longest.”

Ready for the Gab & Grab!

Nonetheless, I managed to fill six cartons with art materials for USk Seattle’s annual Gab & Grab (we had a special Black Friday edition last year, but typically we do only one each winter). I probably could have filled more, but I ran out of time, and I was satisfied that I had at least purged every category once. When I put everything out for the Grab tomorrow, I will try to remember to take photos!

Since at least one reader has expressed interest in hearing my criteria for purging, I’ll try to articulate that now. The first pass was easy: Anything I knew was of poor quality or a duplicate, out it went. (If the quality was so bad that I would be embarrassed to give it to a friend, it went into the Goodwill box.) Also easy were lots of materials I had used once to review for the Well-Appointed Desk but knew I would not use again.

That’s as far as I went for smaller categories. For my largest categories – colored and graphite pencils and related erasers, sharpeners and other accessories – I had to take a second pass, which was harder. I have a vast accumulation of “OK” products that I might use again with varying degrees of satisfaction. But given how many superior products I also have (the ones much better than “OK”), would I ever really choose to use those that are simply OK? Do I ever reach for them now? The answer was clear (but it was painful because I had so many in that category).

Finally, I have quite a few pencils and pencil sets that I would put in the “novelty” category. They had no purpose beyond initially amusing me, and much as I hated to admit it, the amusement was short-lived (I suppose that’s the definition of novelty). If it no longer brings joy or purpose, out it went.

Though it was a painful, tedious process, I’m happy to say that most of what I’m left with are products of the highest quality or simply products that both give me joy and have purpose. Some items, of course, are beyond purpose yet still bring joy – certain “collectible” pencils. Although I purged many of those, too (such as pencils that other people decided I needed to have in my collection but that I didn’t actually collect myself, or duplicates), I kept many favorites.

When I eventually move out of this house, I’ll have to make yet another cut, which will be more severe still. But I’m optimistic that I’ve made a deep enough cut this time that it won’t be too bad in terms of volume (as long as I don’t add to the accumulation during the years in between!).

In my Jan. 15 sketch journal page (below), there’s a reference to the hall cabinets. Although technically not part of downsizing, I had a new cabinet built to fill a large hole that had been in the hallway the past 20 years (details in the photo cutlines below). It was much harder than I had expected to find a cabinetmaker who would custom-build it to match the original cabinet above it – everyone wants to plug and play! The new cabinet doubles my space for linens and sundries, so I no longer have to go upstairs for some of those items.

1/15/25 Third Place Commons

Before filling the new cabinet, I took everything out of the old cabinet, tossed some old linens and especially a ton of sundries I have no intention of using. I mean stuff like old shampoos and soaps (tried but didn’t like them), expired medications, hair clips and ties from when I had long hair, on and on and on! I found a whole box of different colors of shoe polish and leather-treating products that Greg must have used decades ago when he wore shoes that could be polished! Clearing all that junk out and organizing the stuff I actually do use was almost as satisfying as clearing out my studio. Imagine opening a cabinet and being able to grab a fresh toothbrush or spool of floss without digging!

AFTER: 20 years later, "someday" finally came!
I had a cabinet built to match the original. 
Since we had saved the original drawers,
I was able to reuse the knobs. Now they all match.

BEFORE: Drawers in the lower space had to be
destroyed 20 years ago to gain access to 
plumbing for the adjacent bathroom. We just
covered the hole with a sheet of MDF until 
"someday" when we would fix it.

BIG Play Date

 

1/15/25 Third Place Commons (Neopastels)

Inktense Blocks

For most of a year now, I’ve been exploring a comics approach to on-location sketching (and thinking in terms of comics in general). I still love it, and there’s still much to learn and try. But I’ve lately been feeling constricted by my small sketchbook format made even tighter by the multi-panel approach. Each sketch ends up being only two or three inches, which requires using finer media and small spots of color. I’ve been craving BIG! Or at least bigger.

The thing is, I don’t like using thick, soft media when I’m sketching on location in my usual manner: standing. I need a table for support so that I can apply pressure to a larger page, which limits the places I can use them. But winter is when I spend the most time sketching indoors in cafes and such, so it’s a good time to go big and chunky.

I knew that they had both been using them lately, so for our next play date, I proposed to Roy and Mary Jean that we all bring our fat media: Crayons, pastels, chunky water-soluble sticks. I hoped that hanging around with them as they used theirs would encourage me.

And it did! With all of us spreading our toys out on a large, round table at Third Place Commons, I had no trouble jumping into the thick of things, so to speak. I used Caran d’Ache Neopastel oil pastels (which I had previously tried only on portraits) and Derwent Inktense Blocks. Next time, I think I’ll bring some Caran d’Ache Neocolor II water-soluble crayons.

Nothing like chunky toys and inspiring playmates to kill the winter blahs!

Inktense Blocks

Our playground!

Third Place Commons

 

5/7/24 Third Place Commons, Lake Forest Park

Third Place Commons is an ideal spot when Roy and I want to talk about and make comics. It’s a huge space, so we can choose close-up, middle-ground and distant compositions, and it’s full of people meeting and talking and who tend to stay around for a while.

Recently I had been thinking about some exercises I had done in Taylor Dow’s Observational Cartooning workshop three years ago. I remember clearly the exercise that I had enjoyed most: Going out to Volunteer Park to draw from life while speculating about what people or things were saying or doing. Even though the “characters” were real people and not imaginary, I could use words to add an imaginary layer. I especially had fun making up dialog between inanimate objects – it was comic-making that felt easier than anything else I had tried.

Hearing all the chatter around us as we sketched, I warmed up with the blue Uglybook (above) to capture some of the yackers (and a young woman who was quietly studying). The page was a way to get back into that fun frame of mind from the workshop.

Then I immediately started a second comic spread in a larger, lavender-colored Uglybook (below) to capture the different types of communication going on with more speculation. Fun! I think I’ll do this more often when I sketch in places with lots of people.

The scanner cut off the right edge, so I'm also showing the photo image below.

The "bible" of autobiographical comics.

While at Third Place Commons, I stopped in at Third Place Books to pick up the book I had ordered: Lynda Barry’s Making Comics. I had read a library copy three years ago. Back then, my focus was on learning to draw from imagination more than on making comics, so I didn't get far with Barry's remarkable teaching methods. But if Scott McCloud’s books are seen as the “bibles” of all comics-making, certainly Barry’s books are the “bibles” of autobiographical comics. Making Comics is rich in creative exercises and techniques to help people mine their personal stories and get them out in comics form. It was time to own a copy.

Comics campadres are at it again!

Comic Diaries with Roy

 

4/17/24 The panel at upper left was imaginary. The rest of the page spread was sketched on location at Third Place Commons in Lake Forest Park. 

My friend Roy has become a comic diary afficionado as I have. We met at Third Place Commons last week to talk about the process, exchange ideas and, of course, make comic pages. Fans of comic artist and urban sketcher Drewscape, we were both taken with his video about “real-time” autobiographical comics. It’s really no different from the kind of urban sketching Roy and I always do, but framing the practice with a comic approach gives context and “story” to drawing whatever we happen to see or experience.

I really admire and aspire to Roy’s sequential narrative and strong graphic appearance. Learning from him, I’m trying to apply more solid blacks to backgrounds, which adds to the comic book look and serves as a compositional tool to aid the viewer’s eye. You’ll see more of my attempts in tomorrow’s post.

Look how comic-booky Roy's page spread looks! I aspire to that -- or my own version of that.

Two Entrances to the Burke-Gilman

 

9/6/22 Burke-Gilman Trail from Burke-Gilman Park

A few weeks ago I learned that the pocket park abutting the Burke-Gilman Trail is aptly called Burke-Gilman Park. Since it’s conveniently located just behind Metropolitan Market where I occasionally shop, I stopped for a sketch a few days ago. This time I turned toward the biking/running/walking trail, which was streaked with light. I tried to capture all the bits of backlighting on the trees and even blades of grass.

The 27-mile-long Burke-Gilman Trail occupies an abandoned railway corridor that starts in Kenmore, crosses Seattle and ends at Golden Gardens Park. That afternoon during a meeting at Third Place Commons (where I’ve sketched many times with Urban Sketchers and on my own), I learned that I could easily walk from there to the Burke-Gilman. Near the entrance to the trail, I found Lake Forest Park’s Northshore Fire Department’s Station 57. I didn’t have much time, so instead of looking for a sketch on the trail, I made a quick one of the station.

Northshore Fire Station 57

Although I have walked on bits and pieces of the trail, the only part I’ve sketched is the scenic stretch along the Lake Washington Ship Canal in Fremont. It was an unusual coincidence to sketch near the trail twice in one day.

Third Place Books

4/28/21 Third Place Books in Ravenna

Although Third Place Books in the Ravenna neighborhood is only about a mile away, I have spent more time and money at its other branch in Lake Forest Park. That’s because USk Seattle has met at Third Place Commons numerous times, and a stop at the book store is always fun.

To celebrate Independent Bookstore Day last Saturday, I ordered from three local shops – Phinney Books, Elliott Bay Book Company and Third Place Books in Ravenna – and they all kindly offered curbside pickup services. In addition, Blackwing put out a limited-edition pencil to commemorate the day, so of course I had to get some of those, too.

I scored an ideal parking spot at Third Place facing the trellised entryway to Café Arta and Pub, which is adjacent to the bookstore. The café has an inviting-looking patio (with heaters, a sign assured chilly potential patrons) that I hope to enjoy sometime soon.

Books and limited-edition pencils, too!